February 4, 2008
Rhetoric vs. Record
Romney’s life problem.
One of campaign 2008’s mysteries is Mitt Romney’s free ride from pro-lifers. His anti-abortion declarations are eloquent, as is everything the silver-tongued former Massachusetts governor utters. But, like most of his pronouncements, his rhetoric is at war with his record.
“Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion,” Romney said while challenging Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1994 reelection. Since then, Romney and his family decided “we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter.” Romney reaffirmed his pro-choice stance in his 2002 gubernatorial bid.
Romney contends he became pro-life in November 2004 after discussing embryonic stem-cells with Harvard researcher Douglas Melton. While U.S. embryos truly are Microscopic-Americans, a skeptic might question Romney’s statement that chatting with a biologist reversed his pro-choice position, rooted as it was in a loved one’s bloody death.
Romney’s metamorphosis would seem more sincere than convenient if his policies matched his perspective. Romney said last December 16 on Meet the Press: “Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as a governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life.” Nevertheless:
On July 25, 2005, Romney rejected a law that required medical centers to provide rape victims “morning after” emergency-contraception pills. The legislature overrode his veto. That December, the Public Health Department ruled that private hospitals with moral or religious objections could overlook the law. Romney then overturned that decision, as a top legal adviser recommended. “I have instructed the Department of Public Health to follow the conclusion of my own legal counsel and to adopt that sounder view,” Romney said December 8, 2005.
“Flip, flop, flip,” the Boston Herald opined the next day. “Yes, Gov. Mitt Romney has now executed an Olympic-caliber double flip-flop with a gold medal-performance twist-and-a-half on the issue of emergency contraception.”
“The appropriate response for Catholic hospitals is non-compliance,” the Catholic Action League’s C. J. Doyle told the Associated Press. “Otherwise, they would be compromising their religious integrity and Catholic identity.”
Romney signed an October 2005 measure to qualify some 88,000 low-income residents for family-planning services, including abortion counseling and “morning after” pills. “We have no objection to the Legislature’s directive that we seek a waiver to expand the eligible population to women with a slightly higher income,” Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom remarked.
Section 16M of Romney’s health-insurance mandate states, “There shall be a MassHealth payment policy advisory board” with 14 members of doctors’ and hospitals’ groups and “1 member appointed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts,” the state’s leading voice for abortion on demand and without apology.
“Romney did not object to Section 16M, even though he certainly could have,” Massachusetts Pro-Life Federation president Jerry Zandstra tells me. In fact, on April 12, 2006, he line-item-vetoed eight RomneyCare provisions, six of which the legislature overrode. While Romney vetoed broader Medicaid dental benefits, he neither rejected Planned Parenthood’s place at the table, nor insisted on including a pro-life representative. Romney and his wife attended a June 1994 Planned Parenthood fundraiser. Mrs. Romney gave the organization $150.
Romney signed this bill, although it did not prohibit subsidies of medically unnecessary abortions. A Massachusetts court ordered taxpayer funding of clinically vital, but not universal, abortions. Yet, RomneyCare unconditionally offers abortions for a $50 co-payment.
“The law exists under Romney’s signature, and the end result is state-funded abortions, guided by the butchering hands of Planned Parenthood,” says Zandstra. “The fact that he wouldn’t fight in Massachusetts does not bode well for what would happen if he occupies the Oval Office. It is exactly this kind of maneuvering that makes conservatives uncomfortable. In this key fight over taxpayer funded abortions, he caved. What would he do in the much bigger battles as president?”
MassDevelopment, an agency Romney’s appointees reportedly controlled, voted November 8, 2006 for a $5 million tax-exempt bond to build a 10,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood clinic in Worcester.
“He did not know about this loan,” Fehrnstrom said in last December 2’s Boston Globe. How strange. Ranch Kimball, Romney’s Economic Development secretary, chaired MassDevelopment. Romney could have opposed this bond until January 1, 2007, but did not.
Romney’s late-term anti-abortionism “was more than just a flip-flop,” said Planned Parenthood’s Angus McQuilken. “This was an extreme makeover.”
Just as Romney’s $983 million in higher levies and fees mock his assertion not to have raised taxes, abortion is yet another area where a grand canyon divides Romney’s words and deeds.
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New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
http://race42008.com/2008/02/04/rhetoric-vs-record/trackback/
February 4th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Deroy has nothing better to do than put together hit pieces against Romney. Why not try something Deroy, how about you convince me why I should vote for your candidate, instead of trying to convince me to vote against mine??
Yawn.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
It must be real sad for Deroy nowadays, being unable to shill for his favorite candidate Rudy anymore. Well, he’ll always have Romney-bashing.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Deroy - aim your fire at the Dems. Romney is gasping for breath, why the continued hit pieces?
McCain has this locked up, barring a crazy hail mary tomorrow.
Please put your slanted journalist skills to work at exposing Obama and Hillary & let Romney depart stage left tomorrow night.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Two Deroy hit jobs in one day! That must mean Romney is rising!! Anyone want to go for three?
February 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I love how Deroy always puts his credentials on the bottom of his posts. I am going to try that.
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Southern CA native Jared is a husband and father of 3 kids. He has a baseball card collection worth $92.00, and he is not very good at golf, but he loves it anyways. He likes long walks on the beach, and watching sports on T.V.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Deroy’s on a roll. There must be a vote coming up…
#5 awesome.
#2 Did he EVER shill for Rudy? All I’ve ever seen in anti-Mitt spewage from this hack.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
“Rhetoric vs. Reporting”
Deroy’s Credibility Problem
February 4th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
“Rhetoric vs. Reporting”
Race42008’s Credibility Problem
February 4th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
murdock and huck. they aren’t FOR anything. they’re just AGAINST mitt. well there’s an old saying in the air force, “if you’re getting flak, you must be above the target”
February 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Deroy, this is a great service you provide here every now and again by showing up to give the resident Rombots a good cardiovascular workout. Some day they’ll be grateful to you for how you’ve helped them.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Like i said in the last thread, we don’t have hugh hewitt posting on the front page, why do we let Deroy?
February 4th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Who’s this we? I don’t think this site operates by tyranny of the majority. It’s Kavon’s Kingdom. People post here at his invitation or comment at his pleasure.
February 4th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
DEROY IS FRIGHTENED….Why else post TWO hit pieces in one day? meh
February 4th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
wow, Deroy must have slept through last year when Mitt was reviled for switching on abortion. The reason is now given a pass is because he has been forthright about his switch, whereas McCain claims to be consistent on everything, yet has flipped more in the last month than Mitt has the entire campaign.
February 4th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Everytime Romney gets caught talking out of both sides of his mouth his supporters go crazy railing against anyone who would dare speak up. Rombots, Deroy is not saying anything you should not already know. Your guy has had several election year “conversions” and for some reason you continue to excuse it and give him a pass. Wake up! He’s taking you for a ride down a bottomless pit. Think for a minute about what he is trying to sell you (and the country)…he’ll somehow push old conservative issues like drilling for oil in ANWAR through a liberal democratic congress with better success than GWB had with a Republican congress. It simply is not plausible. As evidenced by Obama’s whole campaign, the county is ready for a fresh start and its time to tackle problems with new ideas not just repackaged old ones.
February 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
This is not rocket science.
Romney is a Mormon. Mormons disagree with abortion. Romney agreed to not change the pro-choice laws in MA…likely due to the fact that this was certain to be an exercise in futility.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Romney is a baby killer.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Deroy is exactly right about Romney. Why would conservative radio and even some Christian leaders back such a liberal??? Just follow the money trail! Romney’s company Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, the home of Rush, Hannity, Ingraham, and Beck. Just so happens that they are all under multi-million dollar contracts with Clear Channel. And Dr Dobson and Tony Perkins have a political alliance with the wealthy and ambitious Mormon church which is why they’ve sold out.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Michelle, I guess you haven’t been in on previous blogs that tear your theories apart about Bain/Clear Channel. I suppose you think that Hannity etc. don’t have a mind of their own, that they haven’t spoken out against McCain long before Romney came in as a challenger to him? Someone enlighten her that has the real facts. That last comment about Dobson and Perkins having sold out to the Mormon church isn’t even worth the effort to refutiate. This is ludicrous! Where is your proof?
February 5th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Reports from a variety of U.S. publications exposed McCain’s true scandalous character
The Arizona Republic - October 17, 1989″ . . . both in telephone conversations with reporters and on a live radio talk show, the Republican senator was far from calm. He was agitated. Angry. And the way he dealt with unpleasant questions was to bully the questioners . . . ‘You’re a liar,’ McCain snapped Sept. 29 when an Arizona Republic reporter asked him about business ties between his wife, Cindy McCain, and Keating . . . ‘That’s the spouse’s involvement, you idiot,’ McCain sneered later in the same conversation. ‘You do understand English, don’t you?’ “. . . Not content with just bullying reporters, McCain tried belittling them: ‘It’s up to you to find that out, kids.’ . . . McCain wasn’t talking to liars. He wasn’t talking to juveniles. The senator was talking to two reporters.”
The Arizona Republic - October 17, 1989 — “McCain, in a radio talk-show appearance last week condemned disclosures of his family’s ties to Keating as ‘irresponsible journalism.’”
The Phoenix Gazette, November 13, 1989 — “Reporters also ‘discovered’ that the senator’s wife and father-in-law invested $359,100.00 in one of Mr. Keating’s projects in 1986 . . .”
The Arizona Republic, April 29, 1990 — “McCain’s involvement with Keating . . . when reporters called him with questions last year about previously unknown ties to Keating, an investment by wife Cindy McCain in a Keating shopping center and trips to Keating’s Bahamas home, McCain went into a rage.”
New Republic, Dec. 31, 1990–”The only Republican of the bunch [the five Senators], John McCain of Arizona wins credit for finally drawing the line. After the second of the two April meetings [with Federal regulators] he told Mr. [Sen. Dennis] DeConcini [D-Ariz.] and Mr. Keating that he wouldn’t lean on the regulators any more. Mr. Keating called him a wimp. But before the rupture, Mr. McCain and his family were regular guests of Mr. Keating’s on trips to the Bahamas. Mr. McCain reimbursed the owner of Lincoln Savings and Loan for only a small fraction of the cost of these holidays. Yet, he never reported the vacations on Senate disclosure forms, or his income taxes. He said he thought his wife had paid Mr. Keating back. This is hard to believe.”
Economist, Mar. 9, 1991–”Mr. McCain, despite his claims of innocense, was the only one of the five who benefitted personally–family holidays in the Bahamas on Mr. Keating’s tab.”
New Republic, Sept. 9, 1991–Calling McCain part of the “Senatorial Lincoln Brigade,” the New Republic reported that Keating, while bankrupting his savings and loan, had channeled $1.4 million to the campaigns or causes of the five senators, who in turn pressured the savings and loan regulators to back off our friend.”
Regardie’s magazine, April-May 1992 issue. “Ultimately, the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan will cost the U.S. taxpayers $2 billion. It lost $1 million dollars a day from the time Keating bought it in 1984 until its collapse in 1989, and yet he continued to pay off McCain as ‘one of his assets.’”
February 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Romney Fairy Tale:
http://www.ARTLaction.com